


still

by kitty_shcherbatskaya



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/F, One Shot, Post-Season/Series 02, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-24
Updated: 2016-08-24
Packaged: 2018-08-10 21:21:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7861564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitty_shcherbatskaya/pseuds/kitty_shcherbatskaya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Hate is spitting out each others' mouths<br/>But we're still sleeping like we're lovers."</p><p>Carmilla and Laura really need to sort out their issues. Or, what happens in the library, stays in the library.</p><p>My take on what could (but won't) happen after Laura and Carmilla flee the Dean's mansion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	still

**Author's Note:**

> title and lyrics in the summary are from Still by Daughter. 
> 
> (I'm a massive slut for daughter, in case you hadn't noticed)

You know this is a bad idea. You know it’s a terrible idea, and it ranks somewhere in the middle of “attempting to lead a rebellion at a college under dictatorship”, “assuming college students are a match for a horde of amoral deadly supernatural creatures” and “attempting to forge a meaningful and healthy relationship with one of said creatures” (whether she’s amoral or not, you still aren’t sure). It’s terrible and it’s short-sighted and it’s horribly horribly selfish, just like many of the decisions you’ve made in the past few months; but it is so cold down here.

It’s _so cold_. It’s almost as cold as the lavish, unsettling, demonic abode of the monster you thought you’d slain; almost as cold as the metal of an ancient charter in your palms. Almost as cold as the dark empty gazes that burn into you when you sleep at night. Sarah-Jane. Nazneen. Danny. Vordenberg. _Her_. It’s strange how something so cold can burn so piercingly into your body.

You pull the blanket a little tighter around yourself.

And that’s another thing, isn’t it? They all lead back to you. The decisions _you_ made - to be brave. To be strong. To be righteous, and selfless, and all kinds of holy - they have a body count now. You have a body count, which started that day you decided to cause chaos in the university and take down a vampire, and only grew with every single step you took. You thought you were going into the light. You thought you were leading them into the light.

You wonder how you went so wrong.

Because there is no hiding anymore - you have killed, you held life and death and undeath in your hands and you broke it all open and watched a man die, and you don’t even know if you saved a life in exchange. Is Carmilla alive? She certainly isn’t dead.

These are facts. These are facts and conclusions and understandings to which logic and rationality and the need to justify everything have led you - but what is worse is the thing you still don’t know.

Because looking into her wide bright warm eyes in that moment that you’d saved her, you don’t know that you wouldn’t do it all over again.

That’s what leaves you coldest. Because what did it matter, wrong, or right, fair or unfair, when with a little power and the best intentions you could do more harm than your nightmares could ever have invented? That with the haphazard goal to soothe your own cowardly conscience you could rip through lives so easily, so simply. The final decision, the decision to kill - that had been out of selfishness, out of fear,  out of the need for her. The easiest decision, and the least right, surely. Yet it had done more to save the school than anything you’d pushed and forced and indulged up to that terrible, terrible moment.

Blood on the carpet, and ash on your hands.

A growl of frustration disturbs your thoughts. You look up from the blanket clutched and twisted between your fingers, barely visible in this gloomy dungeon that once was a library, to LaFontaine, highlighted sharply in the glow of their laptop. You’ve gotten used to the incessant tapping of keys, the blue-white light that never switches off and leaks into your sleep. But you’re not sure that you’ll ever get used to their face quite so lifeless.

They feel your eyes on them, glance up for a moment - then are back to whatever they’re doing, or trying to do, on the screen. The tapping of keys resumes again.

A few weeks - hell, a few _days_ ago - LaF would have snarked at you, dragged you kicking and screaming out of your self-indulgent melancholy, forced you out of the being and into the doing. It was sometimes welcome, almost always intrusive - but it was them, dealing with ways in the way they thought was best. Now though, as LaF’s breathing always seemed to catch a little too fast or too slow in the dusty, heavy air, it seemed that they had stopped trying to deal at all.

Did you do that to them?

You shake your head, because they’re right, you are the “piniest piner that ever pined”, and they’re an asshole, granted, but so are you.

And none of this changes the fact that you’re cold. Or the decision you were trying your hardest not to make.

Carmilla is curled up, catlike, against the far wall, in a patch of darkness that seems to have managed to be darker than all the rest of the darkness in the low-ceilinged rooms. She is completely still, in the way she can manage to be - the single point of stillness between your and LaF’s twisting fingers and racing thoughts. You can’t see her face from here but you know she’s attempting to sleep, just like you should be.

You’ve already lost count of the days down here and with no idea of when the sun is rising or setting your sleeping patterns are getting increasingly irregular - it hasn’t escaped your notice in this haze of hopelessness that you’re approaching a rhythm similar to that of the vampire. That should probably tell you something.

Carmilla is huddled underneath a blanket, but it’s not the blanket you’re agonizing over. Because, contrary to what those young adult romance novels told you back in high school, vampires don’t run cold. At least, Carmilla doesn’t. She’s warm, and her heart beats. You’ve felt both of those things beneath your skin. You’ve felt her sweat and her heart speed up under your fingers and your mouth and the comforting heat of her sleeping form against your back. You even raised a flush to her white cheeks, once.

No, Carmilla is warm.

And you are horribly cold, and it’s worse with the hunger, and the tiredness, and the isolation in your bones, and you wonder if there’s any way you’ll ever be warm again.

Aside from what you’re considering.

It can’t be right, it can’t be fair, it’s every level of short-sighted, but you need it right now. Where did all those other things get you? Alone, and scarred, and full of guilt.

So you get up on weak legs and, gingerly, go to her. “Carmilla.” You breathe.

She’s heard you. Her senses are sharper than anything you’ve ever known; sometimes that was scary. Other times it was attractive, mysterious. Now it’s just annoying, because she hasn’t moved a muscle and you can’t reach out and touch her, you just _can’t_.

“Carmilla.”

“What?” Her voice isn’t hostile anymore, you realise with relief. Ever since she’d held you tightly as you had allowed yourself to fall apart down here, the coldness had gone from her.

“I’m cold.”

“So find some blankets.” No, after she’d brushed the hair back from your face with a tenderness that broke you apart as much as it pieced you back together, she wasn’t cold. But she didn’t give you pity, either. She’s at least extended that small courtesy to you. You don’t want her pity.

But you do want her warmth.

“There’s none left. And you said not to go wandering off around the library on my own, and I’m cold, and I want to sleep, but I can’t, so I’m just asking you, if we can -” Your words fail.

“If we can what, Laura?” Her voice drops dangerously. “If we can _what_?”

You hold back the shiver that crawls up your spine, and ignore the flash of something traitorous that caused it. “If we can share warmth.”

Finally, Carmilla sits up, incredulous eyes finding yours through the gloom. “Are you out of your mind?” Her voice is low now, and intense, with an edge that you can’t help but flinch at. She lets out a bark of humourless laughter, barely stifled. “No. Go back to your side, Laura.”

That’s that. You hadn’t expected it to hurt like this, and you feel the anger rising in your throat at your own stupid silly weaknesses. You were over. Carmilla probably never wanted to have to touch you again. You’d let what you want cloud what was true again, and more fool you. So you do all you can, turning on your heel and stalking back to the niche between two cold wooden book shelves and the hard cold wall, sinking down and trying to ignore the hot prickling of tears in your eyes.

You never used to cry this easily. It was pathetic, really, what she’d made of you.

LaF was still hunched over their laptop, oblivious. They didn’t seem to care about the damp seeping coldness down here; the constant darkness that made you lethargic and drawn. But then, they had the warmth of the electronics, and they’d never felt the cold easily. They’d never seemed to feel much, actually, whisper your dark chattering thoughts. You push them from your mind.

LaF cared. They didn’t deal with it well, but they did.

You don’t know how long you sit there, drifting in and out of awareness, trying to keep your body from going numb where it was in contact with unforgiving surfaces, when a scrunched up ball of old paper hits you square on the head, and hard. You glare at Carmilla - predictably invisible under her blanket - and unfold a page of what appears to be Russian. The margins are dotted with pencil marks in the slanting script of students long gone, and if this is Carmilla’s idea of a joke - you turn the page over, irritated, and her familiar handwriting in black pen stands out on the faded paper.

_Come over here._

She’s silent when you, gingerly, sit down next to her. Her face is closed and tight, but she pulls your jumper off carefully along with her thick jacket, and lays them over the top of you both, and your combined blankets, and pushes you down to lie next to her, both of you on your backs, not daring to touch. You can feel the heat radiating from her bare shoulder, so close to yours. For a second, the two of you stay petrified.Your mind is blank and those treacherous tears are back gathering at the corners of your eyes, and you knew that this was a terrible idea, you just knew.

Carmilla’s voice is guarded and you flinch. “Would be pretty pointless if you caught pneumonia after all the hassle I went through to get us out of there.”

You nod stupidly. “Thanks.” You can barely see her profile in this light. But it’s there, discernible, sharp and familiar, and you want to trace it, at the same time as you want to run as far away from her as you can, because you sort of want to throw up. But suddenly, a sliver too fast to be entirely human, she turns to you, and her features are sharp, but the glimmer of her eyes is not. Her lips part in surprise at your proximity, and the two of you let out a breath which mingles in between you. It’s warm.

Her eyes tear away from yours, flicking up over your face. They narrow in concern at the wound on your forehead. “It’s been days,” she breathed, “and it’s not looking much better. You might have a scar there.”

“I don’t care,” you reply quickly, because you don’t, because the hole in Danny’s back from which her life escaped would never be healed. What did a scar matter?

Something in Carmilla becomes tight again. She reaches out the hand resting between you and, after a hesitation, her warm fingers press lightly against the tight hot skin there. You hiss, because it’s still tender.

Carmilla’s hand stills, but she doesn’t draw back. “Still hurts?” She breathes.

You’ve moved closer to each other, somehow, her hand on your forehead still the only point of contact between you. “A little,” you manage in reply.

More tenderly, her fingertips glide along the wound. “I’ll try to find something to put on it tomorrow,” she murmurs.

Something in you can’t help but rebel at that. “I’m fine. You don’t have to do that.”

You can’t really see her expression but you feel her withering look. “Well if you don’t want my help, feel free to skip over to your side of the room, _cupcake_.”

She’s got you. You stare back into the glimmer of her eyes and it’s hard to speak around the lump in your throat. “Ok,” you breathe, and she reacts with the slightest nod. If she was too close before, she now feels terribly, insurmountably far from you and you wish you could wrap her around you again. Surely it’s not too late.

Her warm hands are lingering on your skin. “Roll onto your other side,” she whispered, barely audible, and you do, thinking she can’t bear to look at you any more. When you feel her body press against your back, and her arm wraps around you to hover carefully above your stomach, the shock of it almost burns. “May I?” her breath tickles your ear and you can’t find your voice, so you take the hand almost holding you and lace your fingers, bringing it tight against you. Carmilla sighs into your ear and it feels like home and summer and you again, all at once.

Beneath the blankets, your legs tangle; Carmilla extends her other arm and you rest your head there, letting her surround you entirely.  

It brings back traitorous memories: her hands, creeping lower down your stomach with tender reverence; her lips and teeth working at your neck and shoulder; her quiet laughter in your ear.

A tear slides from your eye and your body tenses with the emotion. Carmilla just pulls you closer. As you drift, finally, into sleep, you could have sworn you felt her lips touch your neck.

When you wake up she's gone. You quash your disappointment and get up from the dusty floor, feeling more refreshed than you have in days. LaF is in exactly the same position, in front of their screen, and they give you an accusing look as you tread over to where you're keeping your scant food stocks. “Sleep well, did you?”

“I was cold,” you reply flatly, picking your way through crumbled cereal bars and dented tins of processed meat.

“Yeah, and I bet vamp warmed you up no problem.” The malice in LaF’s voice sent a hot flash of anger through you.

“You know what, LaF, I can’t deal with this right now, okay? I get it. Everyone’s gone and it’s my fault. Fine. Hate me for it if you want. But for God’s sake -” you have to clamp down on the impotent, futile rage clawing up through your throat, “just let me be. Let me _breathe_ -”

You turn away, and burrow into the awaiting stacks, wanting to get away from them, away from everyone, apart from the one person who probably really doesn’t want to see you right now. It’s dark in there. You have no sense of whether it’s day or night; no sense of where or who you are; whether you’re even in Austria still, or if you’ve passed over into some shadow realm out of time, out of place, out of every human experience that had ever restricted you and kept you safe. So you walk.

You have an abundance of energy as you make your way briskly through the narrow tunnels of the library. So you cover ground, focussing only on the names of books, standing out on the shelves you pass.

 _The Hagiography of Kievan Rus’._ You’ve never seen these texts before. You’re well off the beaten track. You keep going.

 _Hartmann von Aue - Iwein, und andere Geschichten_. These books are old, and foreign, and you wonder why the library has led you here. Because there’s no question of that; no question that the direction your feet are taking you is not your own. You’re glad of it, in a way. This way, finally, it’s out of your hands.

You turn a corner without really questioning it, and your feet stumble to a halt.

Carmilla is there. Sat on the floor, with her back against one case, and her feet against the one opposite. She’s reading, and a cigarette is hanging from her mouth, making the air even heavier, smokier. You still don’t know if you like it when she smokes.

“Isn’t that a massive fire hazard?” you say dumbly, because despite everything you hadn’t expected to just - find her like this.

She looks up from her book without surprise. “Somehow I think that the library’s dealt with worse than the odd cigarette butt, sugar.” She scans you up and down, distantly. “I thought I told you not to go wandering around in the stacks on your own.”

“You do it.”

“Vampire, remember?” and there is a hint of edge to that; a defensiveness, over the wounds between you that maybe still haven’t healed. Carmilla has lived a long time. Perhaps everything happens more slowly for her.

“Should I go back, then?” and it’s a stupid question, but you think you’re testing her a bit.

She stares at the page in front of her for a second, and eventually shakes her head. “You might as well stay, now.”

You let out the breath you didn’t know you’d been holding, and sit next to her, leaving a respectable distance between you. She returns to her book. The smoke curls between you.

Your dad had always hated smoking. The memory of him is sharp and painful. You search around for a distraction. “What are you reading?” You remember how she used to let you lean on her. She’d read to you - in German, English, Russian. French. Italian. It didn’t matter, when her heartbeat was under your head and her voice was a caress.

She doesn’t reply for a second, but there is a slight crease between her eyebrows as she scans the page, and you wait, because that’s the Carmilla that you know.

“ _'_ _The word of our first mothers did decree it; and to that we remain true, son of Thetis; as your first fathers commanded you’_ ,” she breathes, translating from the German text in her lap. “Penthesilea. The tragic drama, by Heinrich von Kleist. He was a true visionary, you know. A shame, what happened to him.”

“What?” you ask, because you feel like she wants you to.

She takes her time, plucking the cigarette but from her mouth and crushing it against the floor. “He shot himself,” she replies dispassionately, “on the outskirts of Berlin, in a suicide pact with his dying friend, Henriette - Henriette Vogel. A dreadful waste of a remarkable talent. I tried to stop him - but what was it he wrote - ‘ _d_ _ass mir auf Erden nicht zu helfen war’_. That there was no help for him on earth.” She let out a breath. “He always was inclined to dramatics.”

You don’t really know what to say to that. “So what happens to his Penthesilea?” you ask instead.

“Well, she doesn’t get killed by Achilles, like the usual tale.” Carmilla glances at you, and continues, “her love for him is obsessive, and violent, and she chases him down with her dogs and cannibalises him on the battlefield outside of Troy. Then she takes her own life.”

“Cheery.”

“It’s not meant to be a happy story,” she rebukes you sharply. “Penthesilea is incomplete. She’s drawn to Achilles, despite her will, despite their opposing loyalties, opposing natures. In him, she seeks - _Vollkommenheit_ . Perfection, I suppose you’d say. But his perfection is a lie; he’s a brute, and an animal. Penthesilea loses herself over a dream that can’t be reality. And in the end, she mutilates him with shocking savagery - but also bravery. She destroys his false image. She tells her audience, after the act -” Carmilla looks back down at the pages, but doesn’t flick through, and you know that she already knows the words by heart, “‘- _I was not so insane, as it surely seemed._ ’”  

She goes back to the book, and you wonder why she’s bothering to read it again, if it’s already so familiar to her. You look around for something else to read, but it’s all in a German far too old and advanced for your rough abilities, so instead you just watch her, frowning slightly over her unsettling play.

You feel it, when she grows uncomfortable, because it’s a rare thing. But her page turning slows, and she glances up at you, and sticks the book in her back pocket. “Come on. I told you I’d find something for that gash on your head.”

Strange; you’d thought she would do everything she could to pretend last night hadn’t happened. Carmilla walks confidently from her spot between the shelves, and you follow, because it’s not like you really have any other option. And indeed, scarcely five minutes later, you find yourself in a small, clean bathroom with a medical cupboard next to the mirror. In different circumstances, you know you’d have loved to know how this library worked.

She taps the counter and turns to look at her options, and you hop up without really thinking about it. Then, she squeezes a tube of antiseptic out onto her fingers, and, ever so gently, begins to massage it onto your forehead. The shock of the cold cream is immediately overtaken by a stab of pain, and your grip on the counter tightens. Carmilla’s eyes soften in concern.

You’d close your eyes, except then you wouldn’t be able to see her face, so close to yours. You can pick out the silvery scar above her eyebrow that she’d never explained to you; the tiny imperfections on her that she pretends not to care about.

Her fingers still their circles against your skin. The sting eases. You lick your lip, a reflexive gesture. But her eyes dart down to your mouth; then further, to the laceration on your chest, which your tank top doesn’t hide. So, she looks to you for permission, and then moves a warm hand to the soft skin there.

It’s the most intimate thing you’ve done since she left you; even more so than that kiss you shared over that stupid board game. No one else has touched you here like this, with such reverence, with such tender, torturous attention. The sting is almost pleasurable. And when she stops, all too soon for your liking, you cover the  hand with yours.

You know what’s going to happen. Since she touched you last night, you’ve been aching for her. It’s never enough, the scraps she’s been willing to give you after she burned her fingers on you, and your body, and your soul.

Your other hand goes to the back of her neck. She’s frozen to the spot. She closes her eyes and lets out a shaky breath.

Then, like it’s the simplest thing in the world, you lean down, and you kiss her.

Carmilla sighs into the kiss, and she tastes better than you had remembered. With every soft brush of her lips on yours, you feel another muscle unknot, another heavy weight across your shoulders lift. You don’t know how you’ve lasted so long without it. Your fingers curl in the soft wisps of hair at the nape of her neck.

All too abruptly, she pulls away from you. “What the _hell_ , Laura?” Her voice is shaking. Her eyes are flashing.

You’re not scared. You’re too far past that. “I miss you. This - us.”

She stares for a moment longer, sucking in a breath that she doesn’t need, and runs a hand through her hair. “This isn’t - after everything, everything I’ve done to show you I’m not who you want, you think we can just - ignore that?”

“Ignore what?” You say loudly, your heart pounding. “I’m not ignoring anything, Carmilla. I don’t know why you’re still doing this!” Bitter tears of disappointment and helplessness threaten to leak from your eyes. You look over her shoulder, because it wasn’t meant to hurt like this. “You promised that we would talk - if we survived. And we _have_ survived. Now we’re just clinging on, waiting for something, I don’t know what, and you won’t _talk_ to me -”

“You stopped me then! In the house, over that stupid fucking board game-”

“Yeah - well,” you flounder, because she’s right, “I almost lost you to  - look, I didn't know what to do, but now surely we can hold up the promise we _both_ made then!” 

“We agreed that before -” she cuts herself off, turning away from you, both hands in that wild mane of dark hair now. The name hangs unspoken between you. _Mattie_.   

She shakes her head, goes to leave and abandon you stunned on the counter, but stops and turns before the door.

“Haven’t we hurt each other enough?” she says softly, and her voice sounds so broken that you could weep.  

“I never, ever wanted to hurt you, Carmilla,” you reply with all of the heart you have left. All that she has left you. She hesitates at the entrance, half held back by you, and you’re _tired_ of these games that you’ve both been playing, without even realising what you were doing to each other. “Look, I’m not looking for you to be perfect, or me to be perfect, or us to be - whatever. But everything started going wrong the minute we fell apart.”

Carmilla’s jaw works, and she looks so vulnerable, but you daren’t approach her, not now when she could take flight so easily. “We’re not perfect, you and me both, Carmilla. But we’re a damn sight better off when we’re together,” you think back to those early, halcyon days when she’d hold you and you’d hold her, and nothing could be so lost when you had each other to hold on to. “And I can’t live like this,” you breathe, “I can’t be with you any more if it’s not - if it’s not all of you.”

She walks back towards you and it’s impossible to know what’s going on in her head. You feel raw, and exposed. You’ve no more cards to play. Either she’ll have you - or she won’t.

Carmilla stops in front of you, and traps you between her arms on the counter. There’s a slightly dangerous look in her eyes that sends a shiver down your spine. “I thought you didn’t like all of me.”  

“Maybe not -” and you struggle to say what you mean and what you feel because it’s too big, and it’s too scary, and there’s no one else who you could possibly _try_ to say it to, “- but it’s you. And I’m learning to accept all of you, because -” it’s the wrong time, you’d never imagined yourself saying it like this, but it couldn’t stay in any longer, “- it’s what you do. When you’re in love. It means I have to love all of you. And I do. I know I do.”

She freezes, and you wish you could take the words and stuff them back into your mouth, because you are _you_ and you don’t say these things, hell, you’re not even sure what love _is_ , but what you do know is that every time you look at her it’s like finding a bonfire in the dark, and if you can’t be with her your spirit is going to wilt and die. Maybe that’s love. A part of it, at least.

Carmilla’s staring at you, and you can see by the way her mouth is moving that the thoughts - too many to count, too many for you to conceive - are rushing, rapid and wild, through her head. You speak again, because you’ve come this far now, you’ve nothing to lose.

“Why would you hold me like you did last night if you don’t want me? I’m here, Carmilla; I’m already yours. Just - if you don’t want me, you have to tell me now, because I won’t be able to bear it if you keep on - ”   

Her hands come down on yours, still clutching the edge of the counter for something to hold on to. Her eyes roam your face. “I want you, Laura,” she says, voice low and as intense as the dark gaze pinning you down.

She’s still waiting for your permission. “So take me,” you breathe, and her lips are on yours, commanding, aggressive, and you open up immediately when her tongue licks across your mouth.

She’s not holding back now and kisses hard. You respond in kind, your arms back around her shoulders again, her hands clutching possessively at your waist, running up under your tank top, and you wonder how you’ve been able to breathe without her giving life into you like this.

Teeth bite down sharply on your bottom lip, and the pain she causes you sends a jolt of pleasure through your body. You try to pull her back to you, but her mouth descends to the soft unmarked skin of your throat, nipping and sucking there with harsh determination. “You want all of me?” she growls against your pulse point, and your breath is already coming in short and uneven gasps, because it feels like it’s been years since she last touched you like this.

“Yes,” you manage, fisting a hand in her hair.

Her grip tightens on you. She lets you tug her by the hair back to your mouth, and kisses you hard again. You can feel the indecision in her and, passionately, you take control of the kiss, trying to show her what you mean. She drags her lips from you. “Prove it,” she says, “prove how you want me,” and her hand is suddenly at the waistband of your jeans. A part of you is terrified, because you weren’t lying when you told her that she cracks you open, and doing this will cause a fissure that might never heal. But it can’t be any worse than not having her, after everything you’ve been through, after everything you’ve lost.  

Her teeth scrape the fluttering pulse below your earlobe; her other hand has made its way to the soft swell of your breast. She tugs the cup of your bra down, letting you spill out into her palm and gently rolling your nipple between her fingers. Any resistance you had is gone. You lift your hips to allow her to slide the denim down around your ankles. 

But she doesn’t touch you there yet. “How do you do this to me?” she mutters, and her tongue darts into the shell of your ear, and you let out a moan, because you’re already so sensitive for her. “Ever since I felt you last night, this is all I’ve been able to think about.” She sucks hard on your earlobe and you moan involuntarily. Fingers are dragging over the taut skin of your abdomen. You know she loves how in shape you are.

You get her lips to yours and kiss her messily, tugging on her thick hair in a way that experience has taught you will drive her wild. Right now you’re not thinking about after this; about Silas, or the Dean, or anything that exists outside the four walls of this claustrophobic bathroom and Carmilla’s hands and tongue and lips all over you.

Finally, her fingers come between your legs, and she touches you through your damp underwear. Then, she breaks the kiss and looks at you for permission, and you’re too far gone to give her anything other than a desperate nod of approval. “Please.” God, she looks so good with her lips swollen like that.

She strokes, gently, too slowly, and every movement is agony in the sensation it sends rocking through you. Her other hand is working your nipple harder, pinching and pulling, and you don’t know which way is up. Her lips come down on your neck, on your jaw, and you can only clutch onto her tightly, hoping that she won’t let go. “Carmilla-” she hums, low and languid, against your skin, and it’s embarrassing how much you need more right now. “-I need you - inside-”

She stops entirely, and pulls back, and you whimper, needy and cold without her pressed against you from throat to groin. You can only stare at her, pleading with your eyes and your heaving chest. She smirks, animalistic, and the tips of white fangs peek out at the corners of her mouth. Your stomach lurches, painfully, with want.

The hand on your chest lets go and grips your shoulder instead; the fingers of the other push your underwear aside and plunge powerfully into you. The filthy moan you make is ripped from your throat before you can stop it, because it’s been so long and she’s always known just how you like it -

You try to bury your head in her neck, and she stops her movements. “Look at me, Laura.” Her voice is edgy; she’s barely keeping herself under control. You can only obey. Her irises have been swallowed up by great, black pupils, burning you, and she starts to move her hand again, deep and purposeful. Every thrust is like a gunshot, and you fear that every thrust will be the last. Your hips lift in time to her rhythm. You’re almost off the edge of the counter, desperate to be closer to her, your legs spread wide and wanton. She moves easily, slickly, within you. She’s not even touching you, apart from her vicelike grip on your shoulder and her fingers inside, but her eyes and her hands and the twist of determination on her face are all bringing you closer and closer to the edge.

Your eyes flutter closed. “Laura.” She slows again, and it’s the worst kind of torture, what she can do to you. “Look at me.”

You do. She’s beautiful. She’s everything.

She rewards you with another finger, sliding in to join the first two, and you’re so full - the stretch burns in the best way. Her thumb brushes your sensitive clit, and you pulse, once, around her. “You’re tight,” she murmurs.

“It’s been - a while,” you manage.

“You haven’t touched yourself since I left?” she asks intently.

You can’t even summon a lie to your lips. “It’s not the same.” The way she stares at you then makes your hips buck up and your hands twist in her hair. She slows, but deepens her thrusts, and begins to curl her fingers up to that spot which makes you see stars. The thumb on your shoulder comes up and traces the vein in your neck. There’s going to be bruises later.

“I’m close,” you gasp, and you feel yourself fluttering around her, your hips losing their rhythm, and you tip your head back - she seizes your neck, and drags your head back down to meet her eyes.

“Look. At. Me.” You don’t know how you do it, but you do.

Her eyes are so black, so deep. Her fingers curl with agonizing precision. Her thumb rubs slick circles into your sensitive flesh.

You stop breathing. You can’t feel anything but her. You’re hanging on the edge of complete oblivion, and it’s never looked better.

“Good girl,” she breathes. “Come for me.” It’s in that moment, the softness of the command in her voice, that you can’t take it any more and your orgasm rushes in, breaking the dam of your self control, powerful, cresting, consuming. She’s all you can sense, all that you know. You press your hips down, grinding on her fingers, desperate to take her as deep as possible, make her part of you. You feel her hand let go of your neck and cup your cheek. Her thumb is on your lips, in your open mouth; your hands clench and pull wildly at her hair. She keeps pounding, slower, shallower, gentler, letting you ride out the pleasure, until you can’t take it any more and you grab her wrist between your legs with a weak hand. She pulls out of you, her hand tender on your cheek.

An awareness of the room comes back to you. You’re on the very edge of the counter, Carmilla close between your thighs. You can feel the wetness and the rawness she’s left behind.

You suck oxygen into your body. The spots before your vision fade. Her eyes are wide, and shocked, and worried, and she opens her mouth, but you know she’s going to say something stupid, and you get there first.

But of course you don’t know what you’re saying until your mouth has already decided. “Hey.” Your voice is shaky and rough. So you communicate the rest with your eyes.

Her gaze glances nervously over you; you focus on breathing, and watch her steadily; daring her to respond. She’s flushed. After a lifetime, she smiles, slowly and beautifully shy, and it makes her look so much younger than the woman who had turned you weak just minutes ago. Your heart skips. “Hey.”

Clouds clear. Self-consciously, she raises her hand, still covered with you, and a smile tugs across your face. You twist and run the tap for her.

She helps you pull your jeans back up, and put your bra straight, and brushes the hair from your face. Then, you just look at each other for a second.

“Was it - was it too much?” Carmilla asks you. “I’m sorry, I -”

You shake your head, wondering how she could still be so uncertain, even now. “Don’t. I wanted you to.”

You hop down from the counter to stand opposite her, but your legs aren’t quite steady yet. She takes your hand automatically to help. Your fingers intertwine.  

She opens the door back to the library, but hesitates at the threshold. “Laura - you know this doesn’t change what I said. We still have to talk about this.”

You don’t let go of her hand. “I know.” You think you’re starting to get a feel for the library; perhaps as much as it’s got a feel for you. The dark is almost welcoming.

But it’s not long before it recedes, and you find yourselves bathed in the warm glow of a single candelabra. Under it: two armchairs, huddled together, away from the world. A jug of water; it’s full. A hidden alcove that neither of you had noticed before. That maybe hadn’t existed before.

Your feeling was right. You send the shelves and stacks and books a silent prayer of thanks, and sit yourself on one comfortable chair. “So. Let’s talk.”

Carmilla stares at you. Then, she steels herself, and follows you. Like she always has. 

You don't feel cold any more.

**Author's Note:**

> thx 4 the clicks
> 
> Real talk, I'm not particularly happy with this, but the first third of it or so has been in my drafts for months and I really wanted to finish it before I leave for Russia on Friday morning and miss the chance before S3. So let me know what worked and what didn't, because a lot of it is, to me, unacceptably rushed.
> 
> Also, first time writing smut. Baby's all grown up. So drop a line if that's something I should, you know, never do again.
> 
> (Penthesilea is a badass play though. Everyone should read it, and not just to find an extremely pretentious metaphor for their girl troubles)
> 
> As ever, I love your comments here, or come find me @ viele-kleine-leute.tumblr.com . Assuming I don't get, like, arrested by the het police in mother russia 
> 
> ciao ciao xo


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